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Counting the Bricks

Posts tagged ‘Lego’

Lego bricks are a fascinating tool. Mostly considered a creative and engaging toy, they are much more than that. What is a toy that enhances children’s creativity and imagination, becomes a tool to enhance understanding and explore opportunities in business.

There is an increasing interests in anything that is LEGO: from the business case of a company that employed co-creation and changed a negative trend in the ’90s into a global success.

And there are an increasing number of applications that are exploiting the simplicity of systemic bricks that can be combined in countless ways and gain a number of different meanings based on individual narratives and stories.

Bricks are natural story maker tool: children imagine adventures while playing and building objects. And so do adults, although they may need some help.

I’ve decided to apply the LEGO SERIOUS PLAY methodology to journalistic interviews and chose to explore and learn more about OccupyLSX through the use of LEGO . I have been around St. Paul’s camp looking for someone to involve in my experiment. And that’s when I’ve met Helen.

She is 17, she is studying textile, “I still go to the college from here in the morning, which is difficult because it’s freezing and it’s too cold to get up. It’s not nice.” she says with a smile.

I ask Helen to build me the first model, to let her familiarize with LEGO.

She looks at me and then she picks up the LEGO bricks and starts building something. When she has finished, I ask her to describe me what has she has built: “It’s a rainbow colour tower and it’s thin in the middle because it’s gonna collapse and it’s not like stable. It’s quite odd, I don’t know… And the flower on the top represent all of mankind, it’s kind of victorious.”

The tower has a thinner part, I investigate more and question Helen about that.

“Because it’s quite unstable, it’s not necessarily like a tower… it’s much like the world at the moment, it’s very unstable, it’s very unsustainable….”

She is smiling and is getting engaged with the LEGO, I ask her to build a model of the world as she sees it.

It takes some time, she puts the bricks together and when she is done, she starts telling me the story of the world through her model.